After the Battle is Quiet
by Eilwynn
Summary: Involves a cup of tea, a sleepless night, and many invisible ghosts.  A drabble-esque oneshot delving into Harry's thoughts and feelings post-war.  Ginny/Harry, with brief hints of Luna/Harry if you squint.


_After the Battle is Quiet_

Harry lay in bed, his eyes wide open in the dark. He'd always had problems with sleeping, thought too much; even at Hogwarts, he'd never fallen asleep instantly, as all the other boys in his dorm had. But he had never voluntarily attempted to block out sleep before. Not even during the war, when there was always the chance he could come into contact with Voldemort's mind, had he run from sleep.

But now, it seemed that the high-pitched, desperate, need-based fervor of the war had broken. He was left adrift, feeling bored and trapped and surprisingly useless in the aftermath - which was ridiculous, really, because every minute of the war he had spent hoping that it was all some kind of horrific dream, or hoping that it would end. He had never wanted to be the war's hero, had never had any dream of being a hero at all.

But, all the same, he had not had a full year where he was not thrust into some kind of action-packed, frightening danger since he was ten. And now here he was, not sure what to do now that it was... all over. He was just normal - or as normal as he could ever be. And all he was left with were the memories. Memories of  
><em><br>"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead -" A shrill voice was laughing and his mother's was screaming in a confusing cacophony of violent sound... the world spun faster and then he collapsed and -_  
><em><br>"Avada Kedavra -" A blast of green light blazed through Harry's eyelids, and he heard something heavy fall to the ground beside him; the pain in his scar reached such a pitch that he retched, and then it diminished; terrified of what he was about to see, he opened his stinging eyes. Cedric was lying spread-eagled on the ground beside him. He was dead. He looked up wildly and -_  
><em><br>The laughter had not quite died from Sirius's face, but his eyes widened in shock. It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall: his body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backwards through the ragged veil hanging from the arch. Falling, like -_  
><em><br>"Avada Kedavra -" A jet of green light shot from the end of Snape's wand and hit Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry's scream of horror never left him; Body-Bound and silent and unmoving, he was forced to watch as Dumbledore was blasted into the air: for a split second he seemed to hang suspended beneath the shining green skull in the sky, and then he fell slowly backwards, like a great rag doll, over the battlements of the Astronomy Tower and out of sight. Through the night sky and -_  
><em><br>A second's relief from the Death Eaters' bombardments, and then another burst of green light. Hedwig screeched and fell to the floor of the cage held dangling in Harry's hand, the one second it hadn't been clutched close to him. Guilt and grief and helplessness, like -_  
><em><br>Bill, looking windswept and solemn from the recent battle, stared his father directly in the face and said, "Mad-Eye's dead." The room was stunned into silence. Silence, and Harry looked down, and -_  
><em><br>Small and frail in Harry's arms, Dobby's eyes found his, and his lips trembled with the effort to form words. "Harry... Potter..." And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing more than great glassy orbs, sprinkled with light from the stars they could not see. Staring unseeingly, like -_  
><em><br>George, Percy, and Ron were grouped on the ground where the wall had been blasted apart. "No - no - no!" someone was shouting. "No! Fred! No!" And Percy was shaking his brother, but Fred's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face. His face slackened, and then there was another face slackening before Harry -_  
><em><br>When the flask of memories was full to the brim, and Snape looked as though there was no blood left in him, his grip on Harry's robes slackened. "Look...at...me..." he whispered. The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed, blank, and empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor, and Snape moved no more. Still, still, like -_  
><em><br>Remus and Tonks, pale and still and peaceful-looking, lay as if asleep beneath the dark, enchanted ceiling in the Great Hall. And surely it couldn't be worse than that, as Harry stumbled backward away from the sight, but -_  
><em><br>Harry glanced down and felt another dull blow to his stomach: Colin Creevey, though underage, must have sneaked back in to fight, just as Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle had done. He was tiny in death._

Harry knew that they were okay, that they had just gone beyond. He had even been able to talk with four of them. But that didn't change the fact that they were all dead, and he had seen it, was probably partially to blame for each of them. And now, now when he finally had the time to dwell on it, their deaths haunted him. Every time he closed his eyes, there they were.

He slipped quietly from the bed, careful not to awaken Ginny beside him. He'd woken her up enough since the end of the war as it was. She was understanding, knew what it was like to be haunted by something horrific that you had no control over, but though she was compassionate, she was also quiet and firm because she knew there wasn't much she could say. So she was just there for him. He didn't know what he'd do without her, honestly. She was a constant bright spot in his life - the only one, it seemed, some days.

He turned on the kitchen light, moving over to the stove to make himself some tea. Mechanical. Blank. Not really thinking.

Ginny played Quidditch; she had tried out and been signed on to play for the Holyhead Harpies just in the past few months or so. Something about "proving she's more than the girlfriend of The Boy Who Lived." He was proud of her, of course, prouder than he could say. Yet even as he trusted in Ginny's skill as a flier, even as he knew it wouldn't realistically happen, it was hard to watch her play in the heat of the game with all of that violent action all around her. Hard, when any chance accident could knock her off her broom and send her plummeting toward the ground. Falling, like Dumbledore, like Sirius, and leaving him.

Yet he supposed he was no better. Auror training wasn't exactly safe, either. He had done it because he had to, honestly - he could no longer imagine a life just sitting around working, not fighting, not doing anything against another force. Ron had come into training with him, but it wasn't the same for him; Harry suspected that being an Auror was not what Ron wanted to do with the rest of his life, and he knew that Ron worried about him, privately, just as much as anyone else did sometimes. And Ginny, of all people, would have had a reason to worry about him, to spend three quarters of her time trying to cheer him up and get him to be more open (something he wasn't entirely sure how to be, even as he appreciated the effort). Yet she had said nothing, did nothing of the kind, because she understood how he was and was proud of him for the strength she thought it embodied. She was just there. Quiet. And sometimes, when the ghosts distracted him, she would know and would slip her hand into his and ask him quietly if he was alright. He always responded that he was - because, really, he was as alright as he could expect himself to be - and in doing so he felt himself _become_ a little more alright.

Perhaps that meant the hauntedness would fade in time. He wasn't sure.

It was strange. The first time he had ever seen a ghost was on his very first night at Hogwarts, and back then, amid the crowd of other first years, he had felt just as intimidated by their presence as anyone else. But as he had gotten older, Harry had realized it wasn't the ghosts in the world you had to worry about. It was the ghosts in your own mind, the ones you couldn't get rid of, the ones that came into your thoughts at the most mundane moments because some chance happening flew you back into the past.

And the past was what was haunted.

Colin, flashing his camera eagerly, or trying to reverse the words on those stupid _Potter Stinks _badges that Malfoy had made in fourth year, or memorizing Harry's schedule just so he could come up to him a million times a day and chirp, "Hiya, Harry!"

Remus, giving Harry chocolate as he helped him learn to fight off the Dementors he knew a thirteen-year-old had no business fighting, or arguing with him about the use of violence in war and the state of his own child as Harry grew into an adult, or laughing as Harry called being a werewolf "just a... a problem."

Tonks, and the way she would trip over that ugly troll-leg umbrella stand at Grimmauld Place ever time she entered and cause Sirius's mother's portrait to start shrieking, or the way she'd make her hair and face shape-shift into ridiculous guises to entertain Ginny and Hermione at dinner, or the way she once called the Dursleys "clean" like it was some sort of peculiar disorder.

Snape, and his "Always" as he formed the doe Patronus in Dumbledore's office, and his biting comments and dislike over the years in school even as all the while he was silently giving his existence over to the protection of Harry because of his devotion to a woman he'd loved decades ago.

Fred, joining George in making fun of the very idea that Harry was the Heir of Slytherin, or trying to figure out what would happen if you fed a Filibuster Firework to a salamander, or giving Harry the Marauder's Map, or trying to overcome Dumbledore's age line, or beginning their own joke business despite their mother's anger while they were still at school, or tormenting Umbridge, or flying off in a blaze of firework glory, or just playing games of Exploding Snap with Harry and Ron at Hogwarts - Fred, asking Angelina Johnson on their first date by yelling the invitation to her from across the Gryffindor Common Room; Fred, pale with worry at George's injury in the Battle of the Seven Potters - Fred, whom a part of quieter George seemed to have died along with.

Dobby, who had been brave enough to want freedom when no other elf had, who had always cheerfully worn his bizarre assortment of brightly colored clothes, whose last act had been defying the masters he had broken away from.

Mad-Eye, who, in his own gruff, abrupt way, had been constantly working for the Order and trying to protect Harry.

Hedwig, who had never taken any madness from him without letting him know her indignation, but who had been devoted and quietly affectionate and had never failed a delivery.

Cedric, whom Harry had always disliked, not out of hatred, but out of jealousy, because Cedric was everything even he had never been, but Cedric had turned out to be, in the end, impossible to hate, one of the best people Harry had ever known - Cedric, who had been the last person to deserve what had happened to him.

Dumbledore, Sirius, his parents, whose deaths words could not do justice to. (And Harry had never been eloquent enough to even deserve the honor of trying in the first place.)

But he was haunted by other ghosts, too - ghosts of mad Bellatrix Lestrange as she shrieked at him that you had to_ mean _an Unforgivable Curse, of the Carrows and the way Harry had snapped and begun torturing them into shrieking for that brief infuriating moment when they had spit in McGonagall's face, of bloodthirsty Fenrir Greyback and the scars Bill would carry for the rest of his life (and the invisible scars that Remus had carried for all of his own), of Peter "Wormtail" Pettigrew and the strong silver hand that had ended up killing him because of a single moment of conflicted loyalties between Voldemort and his old friend's son - and, of course, the ghost of the story of the faint scar on his forehead, the ghost of Tom Riddle the Lord Voldemort, whose death, for all its relief and all the horrible things the man had done, had also marked the end of a period in Harry's life, just as Dumbledore's or Sirius's or his parents' had.

The thoughts chased each other around inside his brain - during important moments, when he couldn't help but reflect, or even during little moments that reminded him of some memory, of some more blood-pulsing or more innocent time that he knew he could never go back to.

The one time he had confided in someone of this, it had been Luna - she had been visiting Ginny, and Ginny had gone out for a while and they'd been left alone in the living room. Luna had asked Harry peacefully how he had been - it was impossible to imagine Luna being tarnished by anything, even war - and he had begun talking and ended up spilling out everything without even meaning to, simply because it was Luna and she was a good listener and she would not judge and she always knew just what to say. Luna had tilted her head at him and then told him that certainly, his old memories seemed very big and important, but his memory-making wasn't over yet... he just had to begin to look forward to making future memories as well. That this wasn't the end of his memories; he was just creating a new set of them. It had been the best thing anyone had said to him so far.

Harry tried to believe her, but it was hard to sometimes when the old memories were so... prominent. And in those moments of thought, he felt very odd, like a small and uncertain eleven-year-old again.

It was time to move on, and he was trying his best, but in nights like this his old life still haunted him. He wondered if it always would.

But for now, the kettle was whistling and the tea was done. Harry started at the noise, then moved to take the kettle off the stove, pour the tea into a mug, turn to the kitchen table - his own kitchen table, in his own house that he had bought with his own money.

The hauntings were from the past. And for now, Harry sat at the table, looked out the window, and just tried to get by - tried to look forward to the future.


End file.
